For the past 35 years, I have been fortunate enough to live and work as a professional artist. I take pride in locating myself within the longstanding tradition of painting, the lineage of which can be traced back to the earliest examples of cave painting created over 60,000 years ago.
In its contemporary iteration, painting is now being explored in a hugely diverse range of media, with luminaries such as David Hockney claiming the astonishing artworks created on his iPad are as credible as anything he has made in the more traditional analogue media of paint, ink, canvas, and paper. Through his ongoing high-profile experimentation, Hockney has made a huge contribution to digital art being embraced as a dynamic and integral part of the canon. Nice one, Dave.
I'm convinced that technology and art go together - and always have, for centuries.
(David Hockney)
The media in my own work may occasionally change, but the personal imperative to keep working remains constant. There is always something on the go, another idea or sketchbook scribble to develop in a more concerted manner. I don’t remember ever experiencing a creative impasse or ‘block’. Work has always flowed, even if the outcomes have fallen frustratingly short of my expectations. It has always seemed to me that the natural world consistently displays its creative drive, and as an integral component of existence, why should we humans be any different? There is a natural order in creativity which we choose to ignore or fail to develop at our own detriment.
Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.
(Pablo Picasso)
The exhibition Unbroken, currently on display at South Hill Gallery in the UK, is a collection of my most recent paintings and drawings, curated to mark my 60th birthday. The work highlights my enduring preoccupation with humanity’s broken understanding of the interconnected nature of existence, an inextricable web of relationships upon which our lives depend.
Despite our rich cultural heritage - our unlimited wealth of limited understanding - we have contrived, in a relatively short period of history, to divorce ourselves from the living environment which that colourful heritage describes. There is a modern world existential disconnect that bypasses the traditional wisdom of cause and effect. We see the damage we have caused to the environment and each other and carry on regardless. Our actions exacerbate the breakdown. The schism between common sense and cultural norms widens. As the waters rise, as the ice melts, as the plastic-slicked oceans boil and acidify, and as we enter the planet’s sixth epoch of mass extinction, what's the fecking point of making art?
In short, in times of war, famine, and human-induced catastrophe, art isn’t just a commodified luxury; it earns its corn as a vital means of expression, survival, and even resistance. It allows individuals and communities to process trauma, document their experiences, and communicate messages of hope or protest when other political or social frameworks have failed or been exhausted.
More contentiously, it might be said that art’s validity lies in consistently speaking to our greater reality: the poetic essence and archetypes at play in the everyday that establish sacred mystery in the mundane. In his book The Vision of the Fool, the artist philosopher Cecil Collins suggests, “The purpose of art is to worship and praise life through wonder.” It is not the job of art to explain life – it expresses life; it is an extension of life, creating new pathways by which the unknowable spirit of existence can be “contacted, experienced and realised” while paradoxically remaining a mystery.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
(C G Jung)
The path of the artist often starts in glorious isolation, and my experience was no different. Through life-affirming, solitary acts of creation from early childhood that fuelled an intrinsic belief in the value and uniqueness of my vision, I built a confidence, bordering on self-importance, that provided the necessary personal momentum to dedicate countless hours to my craft, to constantly explore uncharted creative territories and to trust an emerging inner voice against the vagaries of external doubt.
I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.
(Frida Kahlo)
The creative process has become synonymous with deep introspection, and I still prize uninterrupted days alone in the studio where my identity and perception of self are inextricably woven into the fabric of my work. It is not merely an exercise in egotistic wilfulness; it is the process of self-examination that pushes the creative practice beyond the ego into a tangible sense of connection with the eternal creative flow of existence. To a degree, my art practice is a means to this quasi-spiritual end, but without developing that early foundational confidence and faith, the courage to manifest my internal world into tangible form might well have faltered.
However, the dynamics of that cosy, ivory tower echo chamber of self-belief shift dramatically when the artwork moves from my private studio to the public exhibition space. Here, one’s carefully nurtured self worth is tested. The act of exhibiting invites external judgement, a forum in which the artist’s private dialogue with their work becomes a public conversation. The sacred preserve of personal outcomes is instantly opened to diverse interpretation, critique, and commercial valuation, often challenging the faith in one’s uncontested initial self-perception.
This exposure can be as exhilarating as it is intimidating, as validating of one’s self-worth as confrontational of a reality that one’s output is not universally received as might have been imagined or desired.
Listening to the siren song of more, we are deaf to the still, small voice waiting in our soul to whisper, ‘You’re enough’.
( Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way)
Personally, I prefer to take the edge off the jeopardy by recalibrating the exhibition experience in terms of ‘sharing’. It’s something of a semantic shimmy, but for me, a slight blurring of the harsh artist/audience duality into a participatory dialogue can encourage more creative outcomes than the binary like/dislike judgements commonly at play. Creativity begetting creativity perhaps – a consciously nurtured, less polarised win/win for all concerned… but primarily for me. ‘Sharing’ rather than simply presenting outcomes helps prevent me from being adversely swayed or distracted by any critique that may arise, perhaps even evoking a protective layer around my most intimate inner dialogue – the source of the whole process. The exhibiting artist should evoke vulnerability by necessity but never to the point of losing one’s personal imperative entirely to the seductions of external validation.
Ultimately, the tension between self-importance and the act of exhibiting is a crucible for artistic growth. Let’s face it, without the belief that one’s creative output is worth sharing, very little would be. And while a healthy ego is a vital tool of the artist, the exhibition process also requires a degree of humility and openness to external perspectives once an audience is engaged. It has taught me that my work, once released, takes on a creative life of its own, independent of my initial intentions and self-conceptions. Navigating this dynamic has allowed me to evolve, refining my vision not just in isolation but in dialogue with the world, transforming that youthful, initial self-importance into a more resilient and nuanced understanding of my place within the broader artistic landscape. I can report that it feels good to be part of a cultural lineage.
Whether or not we consider ourselves artists, by creatively exploring how we can reconnect our personal responses to our wider self (the reality of our origins) art offers an unlimited variety of potential routes out of the mess our species alone has manifested. Through art’s time-honoured application of symbol and mythology, new stories of redemption can be told, bridges can be built, devastation repaired, health recovered, and division reunited. Art heals.
Despite the illusions of separation we contrive to create in the modern world, we cannot break our unending connection to everything. After 60 years of unrelenting social and economic privilege, I still, on occasion, feel completely battered. But the wounds received and inflicted are not the only story. There is one to be told of atonement and exaltation in which joy drives the narrative and where love is expressed in every moment of awareness. In this true story, the inviolable, eternal connection between all things remains unbroken.